Liz Truss claims Britain needs its own Donald Trump

Liz Truss has claimed that Britain needs its own version of Donald Trump, as the Tory former prime minister called for a right-wing “revolution” of the kind many are bracing for in the United States.

Speaking at a New Delhi summit, Britain’s shortest-lived prime minister – who has increasingly adopted the language of the US conspiratorial right since leaving office in October 2022 – maintained that she has no regrets about her 49 days in office or her notorious mini-Budget.

Describing it as a “left-wing view” that her shock plans for £45bn in tax cuts had been unfunded, Ms Truss instead claimed the market backlash which ultimately forced her out of office was due to the Bank of England’s “failure to regulate pension funds properly”.

Asked about her future, Ms Truss said she wanted to see “the best of” Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and Tories such as Suella Braverman create a “fighting force” – akin to the Maga and Tea Party movements in the US – to combat the “very powerful bureaucracy” she claims thwarted her while in office.

Criticising Andrew Bailey for his recent remarks about the EU, Ms Truss said she wanted to take on people like Bank of England governor “in the same way as we’re seeing Elon Musk and Vivek [Ramaswamy] in the US taking on the bureaucracy through DOGE”.

open image in gallery

Ms Truss told the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit on Saturday: “What the people of Britain actually want – and these are the people that voted Brexit in 2016, they voted for Boris [Johnson] in 2019 – they want the same kind of revolution that Trump is delivering in America.

She added: “That is what people actually want, but we have a very powerful bureaucracy who want to keep us attached to Europe, who don’t want us doing trade deals with America and India, and want to continue with the status quo. So that is the battle that is still going on in Britain now.”

Claiming that the Tories lost the July election in because they “didn’t pursue policies that were Conservative enough”, Ms Truss suggested that her party will need to join forces with Mr Farage.

open image in gallery

“What I worry about is – people have voted for change again and again. And it has been blocked by a very intransigent bureaucracy. We need a fighting force,” said Ms Truss.

“So what I’m interested in is how can we create that movement. A bit like the Maga movement, the Tea Party movement in the US that led to the big changes we’re now seeing after the Trump administration.

“Frankly, I think we need a British Trump.”

Pressed on whether she viewed herself as the person to take on that role, Ms Truss said: “I think there’s a question of who that individual might be ... I’m not putting myself forward. I’ve already put my fingers in the fire and had them very severely burned.

“But that is the type of approach which we now need to get the change in Britain.

“And the Trump revolution that we’re seeing in the US – that is coming to Europe. You can see the dissatisfaction in France, Germany with economic stagnation. So you are going to see major changes in Europe as well as Britain in the next five to 10 years.”

open image in gallery

Elsewhere in the interview on Saturday, Ms Truss suggested that Queen Elizabeth II had been “waiting” to perform “her final duty” to appoint her as prime minister before her death two days later.

Asked about remarks in her book that she thought “why me, why now?” after being told of the monarch’s death, Ms Truss said: “I thought that I was going to have the benefit of her 70 years of being on the throne, the benefit of her advice for my entire premiership.

“And then the next day it became clear that she was very, very ill and unlikely to carry on.

“I think she was waiting for her final duty to appoint her final prime minister. And then apparently she was very relaxed after that – she went to bed and never got up again. I still can’t quite compute how extraordinary that period was.”